Music startup Thoughtful Things has opened a Kickstarter campaign for Engram, a hardware sampler and groovebox that processes incoming audio through artificial‑intelligence models. The device is marketed as a tool for experimental sound design rather than a plug‑and‑play pop‑song generator, positioning itself within the growing niche of AI‑driven musical instruments.
Engram’s core function is to take a source signal, distort it with AI‑based transformations, and even generate entirely new timbres that resemble but do not replicate the original material. According to the campaign description, the instrument is intended to push the boundaries of what AI audio models can produce, creating uncanny textures that differ from conventional synthesizer outputs.
The company describes Engram as a “field recorder for latent space,” a phrase quoted from Thoughtful Things in promotional materials. Founder Evan King demonstrates the concept by speaking the word “piano” into the device, which then returns a glitchy, piano‑like fragment, illustrating the instrument’s capacity to capture and reinterpret the hidden representations within AI models.
Engram’s firmware will be released under an open‑source licence, allowing users to modify the embedded models or upload their own. This openness draws inspiration from the circuit‑bending tradition, where hobbyists deliberately alter electronic circuits to produce unexpected sounds, and it encourages a community‑driven evolution of the device’s sonic capabilities.
The Kickstarter offers a limited batch of Engrams at a pledge level of $675, which the campaign notes represents a roughly thirty‑percent discount off the anticipated retail price. While the final market price has not been confirmed, the company suggests it will fall between $850 and $900 once the discount period ends.
Engram joins a broader wave of AI‑enhanced musical hardware that includes products such as Suno’s audio generators, though its creators emphasize a focus on experimental, non‑commercial sound creation. By combining AI hallucination with hands‑on hardware control, the instrument aims to expand the toolkit available to avant‑garde musicians and sound designers.